The use of various fabric softeners in home laundry products has been a common practice for many years. Such products are often of the type particularly suitable for use in washing machines. Only rarely has the deployment of a fabric softener in a composition for use in a clothes dryer been contemplated even though such composition would be very advantageous, since residual detergents and water-rinsing cycles detract from the efficiency of the fabric softeners applied. However, the use of dryer-employed compositions has been discouraged because of the environmental conditions met within the dryer which have substantially prevented, heretofore, the effective distribution of such fabric softeners within the dryer. Obviously, if such fabric softeners cannot be distributed widely and effectively, there can be no effective use of fabric softener-containing compositions in a dryer.
The problem, then, is to provide a method for use in a clothes dryer environment, i.e., a tumbling, a dry-heat, anhydrous environment, which will insure adequate distribution of the fabric softener material to the clothing. A second problem is to provide a composition suitable for use in the dryer environment.
It might be expected that fabric softeners could be easily applied and distributed uniformly to a load of clothing in a clothes dryer because of the heat and mechanical tumbling action of the dryer as well as the occluded water present in the clothing. However, experience has shown that this is not the case. In fact, as stated above, exactly the contrary has proven to be the case.
None of the prior art methods have overcome satisfactorily the aforesaid distribution problems connected with the use of fabric softeners in a clothes dryer.